Abstract. The applied economics understands the concept of money nearly exclusively through the quantitative theory, which certainly remains one of the greatest theories in this topic area. On the other hand, the history of money – be it old or contemporary -- finds two other “nonquantitative” theories as more relevant in the respect that they are able to “cover” this history – these are representative and fiat money. Then, there comes the interesting point: this history “covered”, meaning a full explaining of facts would be made by the two theories and images of the same money just “together”—which is impossible in basic good sense terms, as money (as anything else) cannot be real and fictitious value in the same time.

Keywords: fiat money; representative money; seniorage; barter (and its system); commodity money; international monetary system (IMS); macroeconomics; optimum currency area (OCA); economic theory.